Producer: The Essential Myth
Retail Price: £8.95
Author: M Davies, A Dean, L Hodgson

With a name as good as The Essential Myth, this software house can't be bad. Although they're a mail-order only outfit, I was impressed by the way in which the game was submitted with all the details a reviewer might need.

This game's theme has real topical appeal for me as I've just returned from a trip to the British Museum, where I wandered about for some time wondering where Tutenkhamen had got to (but too afraid to ask lest they think me just a top twenty man). Based upon the mythology of ancient Egypt, it makes several references to characters which actually exist in the tome of eternal knowledge, better known as the Collins English Dictionary (a cross between a dictionary and an encyclopaedia).

It is here we find terse descriptions of the strange names that inhabit the Book of the Dead. Take Osiris, who was the ruler of the world and judge of the dead, and this Horus chappie, who was the solar god who quite liked to be seen with his ornate falcon's head. Throw in an Ibis, which is a wading bird found in warm regions, a Mangonel, which is a rock-throwing catapult contraption (although the picture does give a good clue here), and you should be armed with most of the terminology to see you well into the plot.

Your character is Kteth, a falcon-headed Egyptian godlet (albeit a rather minor one). Life among the gods has been blissful, but after aeons of peace disaster strikes. Your divine father, the great god Set, foully murders the Chief of All Gods, Osiris, in the hope of usurping his coveted position. His ambition is not to be realised though, as the whole pantheon of deities led by Osiris' rage-maddened son, Horus, rises against Set and throws him from the Other World to the World of Men.

It looks as though you'll be born banished from Paradise, but there is hope - some gods see no reason why you should be held accountable for the acts of your headstrong father, and offer their help to see you to the Other World. In this way the adventure presents you with a most unusual task - to reach the gods you must die, and in a nutshell this is what you must achieve to complete the adventure.

You begin your task trapped within the gooey albumen of an egg, and it won't take long before you have a cracking idea as to how to proceed. Mapping is almost a complete waste of time, as everything seems to lead to just about everything else. The game's appearance is particularly good. It's colourful, and although the mock-Egyptian character set makes for difficult reading, it adds to the already exotic atmosphere.

A solid beep sounds as entries are typed, and both text and graphics appear promptly. The old GAC irritant whereby the last location's end tops a new description is still here, but the neat little hand pointing to the last input helps to break up the text.

Appearance is all very well, but what of the substance? Well, I found the game really entertaining. The problems are interesting and their solution a challenge - as each is solved you get that little self-satisfied glow which is the mark of a good adventure. Most of all I liked the intriguing way in which the characters are slowly introduced, keeping the player absorbed and creating a feeling that there's more good stuff round the corner.

Book of the Dead is The Essential Myth's first release. It is a two-part game, written using Incentive's Graphic Adventure Creator, the utility of the moment. The programming team learned so much during the game's formation that they plan to release GAC programming aids shortly, perhaps under the name GACPAC.

Book of the Dead is a fine adventure in just about every department. The theme, presentation and plot are all of a very high standard, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The mail order address for The Essential Myth is 54 Church Street, Tewkesbury, Glos GL20 5RZ.

Difficulty: the friendly vocabulary ensures progress
Graphics: colourful
Presentation: good
Input facility: verb/noun with IT and THEM
Response: good

FAX BOX
Title: The Book of the Dead
Publisher: The Essential Myth, 54 Church Street, Tewkesbury, Gloucester GL20 5RZ
Price: £3.95, mail order only

Good to see an independent house produce something original, rather than the usual Middle Earth clones, and you have to admit that the start of this GAC'd two-parter is certainly different: "You are in a spheroid, swimming in gooey albumen. The sound of someone knocking comes from outside." Assuming you can extricate yourself from that situation, you go on to face a task so obviously different that I wonder no-one's thought of it before, as the aim of this game is to die.

The plot and the problems, so far as I was able to get before peeking at the cheat sheet, are well thought out and logical. The story mainly takes place in ancient Egypt and you are Kteth (no, not Keith, Kteth), a falcon-headed minor God, who presumably spends part of his time looking for falcon-headed minor goddesses to take round the Cairo wine-bars. But when he's not doing that he's enjoying the blissful life of a typical Egyptian Godling, till, wouldn't you just know it, someone comes along and cocks it all up. Namely your dad, Set. He bumps off Osiris, the big cheese among Egyptian Gods, and so the whole family gets booted out of Paradise. You have friends in high places, though, who recognise your innocence, but to regain your Godly status you'll first have to find the Book of the Dead, which tells you how to die and travel back again to the Other World.

Enjoying all the facilities that GAC provides, such as the decent parser, TEXT/GRAPHICS options, IT/THEM options and so on, the only drawbacks to The Book Of The Dead seem to me to be the redesigned old-fashioned character set, which is very hard on the eyes, and the rather slow response time. But they're minor faults in an otherwise unusual game, and one well worth sending off your pennies for.

Label: CRL
Author: Essential Myth
Price: £8.95
Memory: 48K (two Loads)
Joystick: none
Reviewer: Gary Rook

The Book of the Dead is a fascinating little program with a lot to offer any adventure lover, and CRL is doing the problem solver a great service by bringing it to a wider audience. I say bringing it to a wider audience because this is not the first time I've seen this program. It first landed on my desk a few months ago, with a hand-drawn cassette insert. Ho hum, I thought, just another Quilled adventure. Not so, I quickly discovered! Essential Myth, the original crew that perpetrated this title, has managed to produce a challenging adventure with a much more interesting plot than most.

If it's so ruddy good, why didn't you review it last time around instead of making us wait for CRL to snap it up, I hear the assembled multitude cry? Simple - it had some rather odd little bugs in it - in a certain location, if you did something that you weren't meant to do, the characters were replaced by black squares. Not too playable. However, you can bet your watusi that was one of the first things I tried, and, to and behold... Now all is cured, and I finally found out what God really had to say...

Anyway, enough wittering. You (yes you, pay attention) are Kteth, a minor Egyptian deity with the head of a falcon, which, in Ancient Egypt, was a good sign. Your daddy, Set, has murdered Osiris, head honcho in God-land, in the hopes of taking over the place; such is not to be, though, and the sins of the father have been visited upon the child - you've been kicked out of heaven. Your only chance to regain your Godhood is to solve the problems that face you in this adventure; fail, and tough luck, you're condemned to being a mortal for the rest of your life. And mortals don't have very long lives.

The game is a text and graphic adventure. The text is well designed, with some nice touches, like the key-shaped cursor. The graphics are fairly standard, although some locations, like the temple, are better than averagely depicted.

As you journey about, you are trying to score points and achieve Ma'at. Quite what Ma'at is, I haven't been able to work out, but I think it's like mana - magical/mystical strength. Get enough of it, and you'll be able to re-enter paradise, or the Ancient Egyptian equivalent. Some of the things you have to do to get Ma'at are pretty Ancient Eqyptian - just think in terms of primitive farmers and you'll know what to do with the sheep, for a start. Other problems, though, have less relevance to Egypt. There is what looks suspiciously like a TV in one of the screen shots on the packaging, and another shows a very modern looking street. I haven't been able to visit these locations myself yet - I suspect they're in part two of the adventure, and, as usual with two-part adventures, you can't get into the second part without the code word which you get from solving the first part and I'm too dim to solve the first part and I'll never make it as a godling, even a minor one...

I like what I've seen of this game so far. The problems fit together well, and there's a refreshing absence of any need to kill things, which you find so often in adventure games, especially one's which arm you with a knife in the first location. Actually, the knife is for a very logical task early on in the game. Admittedly, there are the by now fairly standard touches which you tend to find in too many programs; the cliff, the rope, the hermit etc. But in the main the game has an originality that makes it a cut above the usual fodder you get.

I think CRL has got a winner here, although I'm a teeny weeny bit doubtful about the price - I think it could be a quid or two lower. Still, on reflection, I have to admit that I think it's well worth it, even at £8.95.